In this course, contemporary ideas in sculpture will be introduced in relation to work in a range of media such as clay, wood, plastic, steel, concrete, and found materials. Student generated imagery will foster discussions around representation, abstraction, the body, technology, public art, and installation art. Group critiques will inform the development of independent work in three dimensions.

This course will explore the work of scholars, essayists, and creative writers in order to use their prose as models for our own. We'll analyze scholarly explication and argument, and we'll appreciate the artistry in our finest personal essays and short fiction. Students will complete a series of critical essays in the humanities and natural sciences and follow with a personal essay and a piece of short fiction. Students will have an opportunity to submit their work for peer review and discussion; students will also meet individually with the instructors.

This course will look at globalization and contemporary art through the lens of border culture, a term that refers to the deterritorialized experience of people when they move or are displaced from their context or place of origin. Their experience of belonging and understanding of identity are affected by borders within the realms of language, gender, ideology, race, and genres of cultural production as well as geopolitical locations.

For Whom It Stands--this upper level course brings together the humanities and social sciences, in particular, theater and history in exploration of multiple, conflicting, and contested meanings of the U.S. flag. We will explore the meanings woven into the flag, artistic and political reimagining of the flag, alongside popular meanings and mobilizations of this treasured national symbol.

The main goal of this course is to examine inequality in the context of sickness and health in the United States. Using a biocultural perspective, the synergistic interface of biology and culture provides a framework for how to examine health in an interdisciplinary manner. We will examine the ways in which inequality engenders ill health, is socially constructed, and the important role that social institutions, ideology, and cultural and medical practices play in creating and perpetuating various forms of inequality.

This course proposes an interdisciplinary approach that critically engages a range of frameworks (geopolitical, historical, cultural) for a study of the complex and contested reality of Cuba. Displacing images of Cuba circulating in US popular and official culture, we examine the constructions of race, gender, and sexuality that have defined the Cuban nation. We will explore how Cuba can be understood in relation to the U.S., and to its own diasporas in Miami and elsewhere.

Students often approach the field of psychology with a desire to both understand themselves and to help alleviate the suffering of others. Many are also motivated by a desire to work towards social justice. Yet psychology and the mental health disciplines, along with their myriad forms of inquiry and intervention, are inextricably entangled with current social and political arrangements.

This course provides students with an introduction to major conflicting economic theories of labor markets, employment and unemployment and will examine the extent to which these theories are borne out by both statistical and qualitative studies of labor in a major capitalist economy such as the US. You will learn some history of labor in the United States, but throughout the course we will try to evaluate the quality of the evidence for alternative ways of understanding labor in the American economy.

It is fashionable today to speak of "sustainability," but how do we understand the term in its broadest sense? Historic preservation plays a key role in researching our history, building civic identity, and creating sustainable communities. Once associated primarily with saving the elegant buildings of the elite, historic preservation today involves vernacular as well as distinguished architecture, landscapes as well as the built environment, and the stories of all social groups.

2017 marks 100 years of US colonialism in Puerto Rico. As one of the remaining colonies that has both attracted national attention but also been relegated to the periphery, the purpose of this Community-Based Learning course is to foreground this important history and explore and strategize structural and grass-roots responses to colonialism in both Puerto Rico and US Diaspora communities. Collaboration, listening, and rigorous research are the hallmark of developing shared approaches to the social, cultural, and economic impacts colonialism has within Puerto Rican communities.